


chase me(and I'll catch you)

by twistedsky



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-02-19 23:23:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2406689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedsky/pseuds/twistedsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ecoterrorist AU! Backdated for clarity. Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons are ecoterrorists, and Grant and Skye are assigned to catch them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	chase me(and I'll catch you)

**Author's Note:**

> This was written around December, and it's an AU, so the characters aren't quite canon compliant.   
> The lovely Jan requested that it be posted here, and so it is!

**present**  
“I hear we’re getting a new assignment,” Skye plops down right next to her partner, Grant Ward, who is currently finishing up his report on their latest assignment.  
  
“That’s usually what happens after we finish one—we get another,” Grant says, clearly not interested in the big news she’s about to impart. He doesn’t even bother to look up from his tablet. Well, she’ll fix that.  
  
“I hear we might get the Wonder Twins,” she says nonchalantly, as if it doesn’t matter to her as much as it doesn’t matter to him.  
  
He freezes at that, but doesn’t look up at her.  
  
Gotcha, she thinks. Getting him to respond at all is always a success story, so she’ll take what she can get. He’s so stoic sometimes that it makes her want to get under his skin.  
  
“I don’t believe they like that name,” Grant says finally, and Skye is momentarily disoriented.  
  
“Oh?” is all she manages.  
  
“But that’s too bad for them,” Grant continues, “Because criminals don’t get media and image consultants.”  
  
Skye blinks, “Did you just make a joke?”  
  
Grant turns to face her, lifting an eyebrow in that way she’s always wanted to learn how to do, and says, “No.”  
  
“Oh,” Skye says, nodding. “Okay.”  
  
“Where’d you hear that anyway?” Grant says, turning back to his tablet, glaring at it the way she’s sure he’d like to glare at _her._  
  
She lets him stew for a moment. “Well,” she pauses for effect, “Barton and Romanoff didn’t want the case.”  
  
“They offered it to  _them_?” Grant asks, looking up at her, and not even feigning disinterest. “They’re practically assassins.”  
  
“True,” Skye shrugs. “But the Wonder Twins have been causing way too much trouble as of late, and the trail has gotten even colder. And you know as well as I do that that means those two ecoterrorists are ours.”  
  
“Not necessarily.”  
  
“Every other team in the agency has had a shot at them, except the noobs and us, of course, so it’s our turn.” Skye is particularly excited about this, because she thinks that with free reign, she might be able to find them, and this could make her  _career._  
  
Grant shakes his head. “I already had my shot.”  
  
Skye swears her eyes bulge out of her head at that information. “ _What_? How could you not tell me?”  
  
“I don’t tell you most things.”  
  
Skye glares at him. “I’m your partner, you should tell me things!”  
  
“I tell you what’s necessary.”  
  
“Obviously not. Now we’ll never get the case,” Skye slumps back into the couch, inching away from him as if to show her displeasure.  
  
He doesn’t care, and she knows that, but she has a reputation to uphold (and she kind of wants to see if she can make him feel guilty).  
  
“Exactly,” Grant says, tapping furiously at the email icon on his tablet, hitting every icon except the one he’s aiming for.  
  
Skye rolls her eyes and reaches out to tap it for him. “You suck.”  
  
Skye sighs and starts contemplating new ways to better the world. Maybe they’ll get that college campus case in California. That wouldn’t be so bad. She could probably go to a frat party or two under the guise of ‘working.’  
  
~~  
  
 **four years ago**  
  
“Where’d they go?” Coulson walks into the warehouse where Grant is awkwardly sitting on a couch.  
  
Grant makes a noise, because that’s about all he can do right now.  
  
Coulson narrows his eyes at him. “Temporary paralysis,” he sighs. “They got away.”  
  
“It wasn’t his fault.” Melinda May seems to materialize out of nowhere. “He did everything he was supposed to.” This isn’t true, and both she and Grant know this, but Grant can’t talk, and Melinda has chosen which version of the story she’d like to tell.  
  
“What went wrong?” Coulson asks, looking out around the little hideout where the terrorists had been living and working. It actually looks ridiculously comfortable for a warehouse—it even has a kitchenette and rather nice television setup.  
  
“They were smarter than we were,” Melinda says simply.  
  
Coulson just shakes his head. “I want you two off the case.”  
  
~~  
  
 **present**  
  
“I’m putting you two on the Wonder Twins case.”  
  
Grant doesn’t even blink when Coulson says this. Skye, on the other hand, is ecstatic.  
  
“This is fantastic—we won’t let you down.” Skye is practically vibrating in her chair.  
  
“I hope not,” Coulson says with a slight smile. “They stole thirty million dollars worth of equipment last week, right under the government’s noses.”  
  
Skye narrows her eyes, already settling into the case. “Any clues?”  
  
“Nothing at all—if Agent Ward here hadn’t gone undercover four years ago and gotten deep enough to come nearly face to face with them, we wouldn’t even know that it’s a man and a woman we’re after. These two cover their tracks way too well.”  
  
“Besides the crimes themselves, they leave nothing behind. No evidence. Only whispers that rarely lead anywhere. It took us a year and a half to find an entry point for their organization last time,” Grant offers up. “I was the only member of the task force to get past the initial test.”  
  
“Test?” Skye asks curiously, already taking notes on her laptop.  
  
“You can’t just join an ecoterrorism group, Skye. You have to prove yourself first.”  
  
Skye nods. “I know.” She and Grant have been working together for about a year and a half now, but they’ve never been on an ecoterrorism case. All she knows about them, she’s learned from basic training. “I want  _details.”_  
  
She takes a deep breath, and Coulson and Grant brace themselves. “What makes ecoterrorists different from regular terrorists? I mean, why do they get a special designation?” Skye bites her lip, unsure if it’s a stupid question.  
  
“Nothing,” Coulson answers seriously. “They’re like any other kind of terrorist—they think what they’re doing is right. Moral, even. They’re wrong.”  
  
~~  
  
 “So what do you know about them?” Skye asks from her seat in their little office.  
  
“It’s all in the file,” Grant tells her, not even looking up at her from his pushups. He exercises in the office when he’s nervous about a case, or so Skye has noticed. He claims it helps him think, and she doesn’t mind. She tilts her head, getting a really good look at his ass. Oh, she really doesn’t mind.  
  
Skye shakes herself free of that train of thought. “I want personal stuff. The file is so clinical; I’d rather have you tell me it. Like a bedtime story!” It kind of puts her to sleep anyway.  
  
“No,” Grant says simply, not even breathing hard.  
  
Skye glares at him. “I just want to know how you got into their little hideout in like four months—a feat, by the way, that no one else has ever managed.”  
  
Grant stops at that, turning over and sitting on the ground. He looks up at her. “I’m good at my job.”  
  
Skye shakes her head. “This is more than that, and you and I both know that. You got inside their heads or something. When they figured out who you were, they didn’t even like kill you or anything.”  
  
“They don’t kill unless they absolutely have to. They’re concerned with billion dollar corporations destroying the ozone layer, protecting the rainforests, saving the endangered pandas—they’re not interested in killing people, unless those people are really evil.”  
  
“Hmm,” Skye considers his words, swiveling around in her squeaky chair. Grant winces at that—he hates the squeaky chair. “You almost sound like you respect them.”  
  
“They’re criminals,” Grant hesitates before continuing. “It’s our job to understand and catch them, not respect them.”  
  
Skye shakes her head. “I’m a really good multi-tasker,” she says simply, swiveling back to face her computer.  
  
~~  
  
 **four years ago**  
  
“I’m in,” Grant says, sliding into the passenger seat of the car. “I’ve got a meeting with the head honchos of the Monkeys in two days.”  
  
Melinda nods almost imperceptibly, but Grant knows that means she’s proud of her junior agent. The team they’re after are  _smart_ —the technology they use certainly suggests they either have some very bright people in their employ, or they’re probably rather scientific themselves, or maybe even both, some agents have theorized.  
  
“I can’t believe they like to be called the Monkeys. It’s probably some weird save the animals crap.”  
  
Melinda doesn’t respond to that, she just starts the car.  
  
“Do you think we’ll get them?” He can’t help but be excited—this is one of his first major cases, and it’s going so  _well_.  
  
“We’ll see,” Melinda replies noncommittally, but he can’t help but get his hopes up.  
  
~~  
  
 **present**  
  
Skye goes into the office a week later, and they still don’t have any leads. Her sunglasses are hiding her bloodshot eyes, because she’d gotten royally fucked up the night before, because alcohol had seemed to be the answer to the fact that the Wonder Twins don’t seem to leave a fucking electronic footprint.  
  
And so, she almost misses it.  
  
She does a double take, and sees the red envelope sitting on Ward’s desk.  
  
“Maybe it’s an interoffice love letter,” she mutters to herself, already perking up. She’s in a bad enough mood to actually be curious enough to check it out. Looking around to make sure that no one is around to see her, she grabs the envelope, turning it over in her hands.  
  
The paper is ridiculously soft, and the deepest red she thinks they can manage to get in paper.  
  
She slides her nail under the flap to open the envelope without tearing it. She thinks she can probably press it back together with a little glue. Maybe he won’t notice.  
  
The soft paper tears, slightly, and she winces.  
  
Well, it’s too late to go back now.  
  
Grant’s probably going to kill her, she realizes. Or not, she supposes, because he’d probably have to fill out some kind of paperwork for killing a partner, and while there are a lot of things he hates, paperwork is one of the things he hates the most.  
  
She forgets this train of thought the moment she reads the words on the pretty piece of paper she pulls from the envelope.  
  
“Holy fucking shit.”  
  
~~  
  
“You got a  _love letter_  from an ecoterrorist. Who the fuck  _are_  you?”  
  
Surprise crosses Grant’s face for a moment, and then his eyes flicker to the soft lilac paper in her hands. He hardens at that, but Skye is still too shocked to pay much attention to warning signs.  
  
Skye waves it around in the air. “What the hell happened when you were undercover? I mean  _shit_. Did you sleep with one of the Wonder Twins? Does Coulson know?  
  
Oh my fucking god, are you covering for them?” She runs through pretty much every intense emotion possible in about a minute before calming down. Shock, anger, worry—she runs the gamut, and she’s left with plenty of emotion to spare.  
  
Grant reaches out and grabs at the letter, but Skye moves her arm back and begins to read. “Hello, Grant,” Skye looks like her eyes are about to bug out of her sockets. “I hear you’re on our case again. It was so lovely to see that you were trying to find us.”  
  
“Skye,” Grant says warningly, and this time Skye realizes how angry he is. His arms are all vein-y and tense, but she isn’t done yet.  
  
“I’ve missed you since the last time I saw you,” she continues. “I think it’s time we restarted this game of cat and mouse. Maybe I’ll let you catch me this time. Fucking  _shit,_  Grant. And it’s signed love ‘J.’”  
  
“What?” Grant focuses in on that. “J? They’ve never left any kind of initial before?” This time he reaches out and grabs the sheet, surprising her.  
  
“Oh,” Skye says, somewhat deflated. “They never leave any clues, why would they now?”  
  
“This isn’t them, Skye. It’s  _her_.” The way he says it is strange, like he really knows the woman. There’s something more to the story than the interrogation he’d said he’d underwent at the hands of the Wonder Twins.  
  
Skye places her hands on her hips the way her teachers used to do when they were about to chastise her for breaking the rules which had, admittedly, happened quite a lot.“Tell me everything, Ward, or I’ll call IA.”  
  
“There’s no need for that, Skye.” Grant sighs, running his hand through his hair wearily. “I’ll tell you what you need to know.”  
  
~~  
  
 **four years ago**  
  
Grant isn’t nervous, not really.  
  
Okay, maybe a little, but that’s normal, because he’s sitting blind-folded in some strange place. He’s not even sure that his people have followed him. They’d been traveling for hours to get wherever the hell they were, and he’s been blindfolded the entire time. They clearly aren’t in range, because he can’t hear Melinda’s voice in his ear, which means he probably isn’t transmitting either. Shit.  
  
“Well, I suppose this is our new bright recruit.” A woman’s voice is near him, he notes. He’s not surprised, because women seem to be as likely to be ecoterrorists as men. She’s British, he notes. Interesting. He files that information away for later, just in case this goes south(he’s pretty sure it already has, but he’s never been a quitter.)  
  
“He’s had rave reviews from our guy in Morocco,” he hears. Scottish, he thinks. The accent is a bit thick, but understandable. He’s a bit further away from Grant than the woman, who seems to be more invested in this meeting.  
  
The woman doesn’t respond to the man. Instead, she speaks to Grant. She places a hand against his cheek, stroking it slightly. “Are you trustworthy?” It isn’t overtly sexual, it’s—well, he’s not really sure what it is. She’s testing him, he thinks.  
  
“Yes,” he answers.  
She laughs. “Well, of course that’s what you’d say. The two of us, though, we’ll need a little more than words. We’re on a crusade—with, well, a lot less death. We’re on a mission to save the world from the people who would destroy everything for just a little profit.”  
  
“Well, it’s quite a lot of profit, really,” the—Scottish?—guy says again. “That’s part of the problem.”  
  
Grant feels a knife slide against his skin, not quite breaking it, just teasing the skin of his hands, which have been bound since they got to wherever they are.  
  
“What do you think the problem is?” the soft female voice lilts in the quiet.  
  
There’s something familiar about it. Not that he’s ever heard it before, but—it’s warm, and oddly kind for someone who sets off eco-friendly bombs and kidnaps CEOs until they promise to change their ways.  
  
“Greed,” he says, because greed is always a problem.  
  
“Well, obviously,” the woman says with a laugh. “He’s not quite special at all, is he?” she asks, seemingly to her partner, or maybe just to the room. He can’t tell if she’s feigning disinterest, or if she’s actually rapidly losing interest in him. The latter could be a problem if his team doesn’t get to him soon.  
  
“Not particularly,” Grant hears from the man again. They sound like the only people in the room—maybe, maybe if he could just get free, he could take them out before backup even gets there.  
  
He feels the knife against his skin again.  
  
“A lack of responsibility,” he says. “People not wanting to take responsibility for who they are, and what they do—a selfishness at the societal level that begins with the lack of personal responsibility.”  
  
“The global level,” Grant hears from the man. “It takes many specks of dirt and rock to make a mountain.”  
  
Grant isn’t sure if this is a good enough answer yet. He doesn’t want to stand out too much, but he also doesn’t want to sound too generic and uninteresting.  
  
“Hmm,” the woman sighs. “I suppose that’s acceptable for now. Personal responsibility. I rather like that.”  
  
She pulls the knife away, or at least removes it so that he can no longer feel it. He hears women’s shoes click on pavement away from him, and he thinks it’s her, because he can no longer hear her light, but still stable, breathing, or feel her presence near him.  
  
“Hello?” he asks the darkness.  
  
“Oh, we’re still here,” he hears from the man. “We’ve only just started.”  
  
~~  
  
 **present**  
  
“She  _likes_  you, Grant. How has Coulson not taken advantage of that before now?”  
  
Skye seems more upset by the strategic stupidity than anything else at this point.  
  
Grant shrugs. “Melinda—my former partner—she quit, and she disappeared without a trace. I was assigned a new partner, and Coulson tried to put us on the case, but we’d lost their trail by then, so we moved on.”  
  
“Woah,” Skye just shakes her head. “This is intense. I read the file, but it kinda skimped on details, and it certainly didn’t say the woman had a thing for you.”  
  
“I don’t think she did,” he says, looking down at the letter in his hands. “It’s just a mind game.”  
  
Skye studies him carefully. “There’s more to this story than them asking you questions, isn’t there? The file didn’t say how they figured out who you were.”  
  
“No,”Grant says, “It didn’t. But that’s because I don’t know. And they—uh, they knocked me out before backup could get there, and I was there, lying on the couch. It was embarrassing.”  
  
“I can’t believe no one took pictures. Broody Agent Ward, paralyzed on the couch. Taken out by two ecoterrorist geeks.” Skye smiles brightly at him. “It’s beautiful.”  
  
Grant just stands up and shakes his head. “I should take this to the lab, see if we can get anything other than our own finger prints off it.”  
  
“Oops,” Skye winces. “I thought it was a love letter or something.”  
  
“A love letter or something?” Grant asks, raising an eyebrow. “Really?”  
  
Skye shrugs. “Yeah.”  
  
Grant stares blankly at her. “And you thought you should open what you thought was a love letter addressed to me?”  
  
“Maybe,” Skye smiles innocently(and she hopes lovably) at him.  
  
Grant sighs and shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter anyway. There’s probably nothing to grab off of it. They sent this message, which means it will only tell us exactly what they want us to know.”  
  
“She,” Skye offers. “She sent this message. It’s for  _you,_  dude.”  
  
Grant chooses to not dignify that with a response.  
  
~~  
  
“Stop playing with him, Jemma.” Leo Fitz—her partner in crime, her best friend, her platonic soulmate in arms—plops down next to her on her hotel bed. Their rooms are connected, but their bills are not. It never hurts to be as safe as possible. “He’s just another government agent, following the rules at all costs. He probably doesn’t even recycle.”  
  
Jemma snorts at the joke. “You didn’t recycle until university.”  
  
Leo shrugs. “I think I’ve more than made up for the foolishness of my youth,” he says lightly, even though they both know that he doesn’t believe that.  
  
“Maybe he’ll do the same,” Jemma says softly, dropping her head back onto the bed. “You have to give everyone a chance.”  
  
“Everyone has a chance every single day,” Leo reminds her. “They choose every moment of every day not to take it.”  
  
Jemma sighs. “It’s just a light flirtation anyway, Fitz. He was very handsome.”  
  
“I remember,” Leo shrugs, leaning back onto the bed to stare up at the ceiling with her. “I just don’t understand why you would send him that note. It’s been years.”  
  
Jemma doesn’t really have a good answer for that. “He seemed . . . nice. Honorable, even. And you catch more flies with honey. Not that I’m really sure I like that particular phrase.”  
  
“You hate it,” Leo agrees. “He’ll just let you down,” he says then, all seriousness. “They always do.”  
  
“Maybe he’s different.” Jemma rather hopes he is. If he isn't, she'll have to get rid of him at some point.  
  
~~  
  
“They just managed to string up the CEO of a multi-national corporation in front of several news media outlets. We’re getting a lot of pressure about this.” Coulson and Skye stare at several monitors, turned to different major networks.  
  
“Well, next time he shouldn’t try to bribe his way out of passing greenhouse gas emission standards. He was trying to lower the standards at the same time that he wasn’t even trying to meet them. Who does that?” Skye doesn’t have much sympathy for the man who had been humiliated on television, and had his bank accounts emptied of every dime, which had miraculously turned up, Skye had noted with a little extracurricular hacking, as donations to several charitable institutions.  
  
Coulson looks over at Skye. “Careful, Skye. You’re starting to sound like them.”  
  
“They have a point,” Skye insists. “Those plants are toxic, and that CEO knew that, but didn’t care.”  
  
“What happened to the bribe-takers?” Grant asks suddenly, and Skye spins around to see him.  
  
“I didn’t even hear you come in,” Skye narrows her eyes at her partner. “You need to teach me those stealth skills.”  
  
“No, he doesn’t. We’d never be able to keep track of you then,” Coulson says with a smile. “Imagine all the trouble you’d get into. Anyway, I’ve already attempted to set up interviews with the government officials, but surprise, surprise, they aren’t interested.”  
  
“They’ll be back then,” Grant says.  
  
Skye nods. “The job isn’t finished yet.” She pulls her tablet out of the bag she’s carrying and frowns. “All four of them are up for reelection this year. You don’t think—“  
  
“That’s exactly what I think,” Grant nods. “They’ll destroy their careers, maybe bankrupt them, and then send a warning to the rest of Congress.”  
  
“Brilliant,” Skye mutters. “It’s the perfect deterrent.”  
  
Grant just awkwardly pats Skye’s shoulder and shakes his head. “The problem is that they don’t have to go after the congressmen themselves. We can’t set a trap.”  
  
“But they will probably go after their money, so I can watch that,” Skye assures him. “They’ll probably see that coming though.”  
  
Grant is still working on a plan on their way back to their hotel. Skye is rambling about how she doesn’t trust banks, because it’s way too easy to hack them when he leaves her at her door, and then steps over to his room, which is right next door.  
  
He notices his phone lying on his bed, right in the middle.  
  
Now he knows he didn’t leave it there.  
  
He looks around the room, and sees nothing else out of the ordinary.  
  
He picks up the phone, turning it over in his hands curiously, intending to head next door to Skye’s, to make sure that it hasn’t been bugged, or—he hears a loud knock at his door.  
  
Skye opens it without even waiting for a response, this time carrying her laptop in one hand. “They already got to the bank accounts. I assumed they hadn’t, but then I realized that the Wonder Twins just took back the bribes which, well, that’s a lot of fucking money anyway, but they just spirited it away. No more, no less.”  
  
“That seems kind of tame for them,” Grant says, still frowning down at his phone.  
  
“Well, yeah, but they already have these ads running—“ Skye turns around her computer and taps the spacebar. The ad plays, showing video of the congressmen accepting bribes, and a bunch of propaganda about how if you can’t trust the people in charge, you can’t trust anyone.  
  
Skye taps the spacebar again. “There are another dozen like it, with all kinds of dirty laundry. Not a single one even mentions their eco-mission.”  
  
“Because then they’d lose control over the message.” Grant bites the inside of his lip in thought. “Can you check this phone to see if anyone has, I don’t know, changed anything?”  
  
“What, like bugged it or something?” Skye takes it, setting her laptop on the bed next to him. She turns it around in her hands. “Why don’t you just get IT to check it out?”  
  
“I will, Skye,” he says slightly impatiently.  
  
“Oh,” Skye’s eyes widen. “It’s the girl again. You think she messed with your phone?” Skye moves to take off the back when it rings.  
  
Grant grabs it from her, looking at the screen. “It’s blocked. See if you can—“  
  
“Already on it,” Skye sits, pulling the laptop onto her lap.  
  
Grant stares at the phone for a moment.  
  
“Answer it, dumbass,” Skye says lightly.  
  
Grant slides his finger to accept the call, immediately pressing the speakerphone button and waiting for Skye to hold up her own phone, ready to record. “Hello?”  
  
“It’s lovely to hear your voice again, Grant.” The delicate British woman’s voice fills up the room.  
  
“I wish I could say the same,” Grant says slowly and conversationally.  
  
“Corruption simply breeds more corruption. What was it you once told me? That the problem with the world was a lack of personal responsibility. All we’re doing is trying to instill a little of that into the more powerful members of society.”  
  
“By committing crimes?” he asks, trying to keep his tone even.  
  
“By doing what most others can’t, or won’t do,” she says, sounding a tad disappointed in him.  
  
“Why did you call me?” he hears himself ask, and it might get her to hang up, but part of him needs to know.  
  
Jemma hesitates. “Curiosity,” she says finally, and Skye snorts.  
  
Grant gives her a warning glance, and the Jemma laughs. “Do you have company, dear Agent Ward? Is that your partner, Skye?”  
  
“How do you know my name?” Skye asks, her fingers freezing over her keyboard until Grant gives her a tense look, and motions for her to continue.  
  
“I know quite a bit about you, sweetheart. Maybe you’d be more interested in our mission to save the world from itself than Mr. Ward here.”  
  
“I already have a job,” Skye replies cheekily. “I’m fine where I am.”  
  
They can hear her  _tsk_  over the phone. “Well, if you change your mind, we could have a place for a woman like you, Skye. You’re quite special, and you could do so much more than what you are. Your talents are wasted, my dear.”  
  
Grant is practically vibrating with anger, holding the phone out in front of him. “What do you  _want_?” he demands.  
  
The woman doesn’t hesitate this time. “Such misdirected anger, Grant. I just wanted to tell you that there’s a factory in Prague that you may want to evacuate in two days. You should receive the address via text in a few minutes,” and she hangs up.  
  
Grant tosses his phone down on the bed next to Skye, and Skye sighs. “I didn’t get it. Whoever she has working for her is _good_. I’m probably better, but—there’s only so much I can do with what I’ve got.” She motions towards her laptop and shrugs.  
  
“It isn’t your fault, Skye.”  
  
“It is,” Skye assures him, closing her laptop and focusing her attention on sending the recording on her phone to her email. “Did I ever tell you that before SHIELD, I was a hacker? I hacked the Pentagon once, and it got me a job with SHIELD, actually.”  
  
“I’ve read your file,” Grant says simply. “But all that means is that you specialize in finding things out.”  
  
Skye shrugs. “That’s why this is the perfect job for me,” she says, though there’s a slight uncertainty in her voice. “I used to be an idealist. I believed that the truth would set us all free.”  
  
“Sometimes the truth hurts people, Skye. It gets people killed.”  
  
“I know that, but sometimes lies do that too.” Skye picks up her laptop and gets up to leave. She turns back to him. “Why is she so obsessed with you?”  
  
“She isn’t obsessed with me,” Grant says automatically. “She’s just playing a game with us, because I infiltrated her organization before, and if anyone can get close enough to them again, I can.”  
  
“I hope that’s it. I should get this to Coulson,” she waves her phone around in the air.  
  
“I should get this checked out,” Grant picks up his own phone.  
  
“You can, but I have the feeling that there’s nothing to worry about. They wouldn’t bother with petty bugging. They already have us exactly where they want us,” Skye says, opening his door and slipping through it, shutting it behind herself.  
  
~~  
  
The building in Prague has been empty since the day before, and nothing is happening. Skye, Grant, and the rest of their team are waiting for something to  _happen_  but nothing is.  
  
There are only about five minutes left in the day, and there’s no sign of much of anything.  
  
“What kind of factory did you say this is?” Grant asks after it hits midnight, and there’s no explosion.  
  
They’re all exhausted, and it’s been a complete waste of time. “I have no idea, they make . . . “ Skye’s eyes widen at her tablet. “Water purifiers. That doesn’t even make sense.”  
  
“Let’s head in,” he says, and somehow he isn’t surprised to see boxes and boxes stacked in what should have been an empty space in the factory.  
  
They rip it open. “This is the same tech from five years ago,” Grant says, “At least, as far as I can tell it is.”  
  
One of Coulson’s IT aides looks up at him, “Not exactly. The tech that cleaned up that oil spill was rudimentary by these standards.”  
  
“There’s a note,” Skye says suddenly, holding up a piece of paper, this time while wearing gloves, thankfully. “It says that the innocent will be rewarded, and that the company is expected to use most of these in their charity work, which, I guess they do, or the tech wouldn’t be here. They’ve been given the patent to the tech in return for providing clean water all over the world.”  
  
“I always knew they were scientists,” Coulson says, coming up beside them. “Or that they have some of the best scientists in their employ. This kind of tech doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. You have to be quite the genius.” Grant thinks  _he_  almost sounds like he respects them.  
  
“These are the weirdest ecoterrorists I’ve ever heard of,” Skye says, standing up from her crouched position, where she’d been looking at all the tech.  
  
Coulson shakes his head. “These two have destroyed millions of dollars worth of equipment, stolen billions of dollars from admittedly shady corporations, and have committed the occasional  _murder_. Doing something wrong, even for the right reason, is still wrong.”  
  
Grant watches Skye closely when Coulson says that, and begins to worry at the look on her face. She disagrees, and he can see it all over her face. And any time you feel yourself sympathizing with criminals is a dangerous one.  
  
~~  
  
 **four years ago**  
  
“Do you know there are groups of hunters who specialize in hunting only endangered species? It’s disgusting,” Grant hears a sigh. “We ran into one in particular a while back. It was a very special little club of killers—they’d managed to make at least four different species go completely extinct before we killed them.”  
  
This isn’t the first story they’ve told him, but it’s the first that ended in someone dying. “What?” he can feel his entire body tense at that, and he’d been pretty tense before, because they’ve been asking him questions and telling him stories for the last three hours.  
  
They stopped for a food break, of course, and the woman had untied him long enough to place a sandwich in his hands, which had practically melted in his mouth.  
  
He would have taken them down right then and there, but he’d heard the murmuring of other voices, and he hadn’t wanted to risk it. Not until he and Melinda are within comm range, at least.  
  
Plus, the woman had spent lunchtime chatting with her associate, and he’d been focused on trying to determine if they were giving up any useful information, like maybe what their next target was, or something. They hadn’t. They’d spent the twenty minutes chatting about some gun that the man had called ‘the night night gun’ and the woman had argued about the name with him, but in the end they hadn’t even settled the matter.  
  
But now, the woman is telling him that they killed a group of people that SHIELD hadn’t even known about, and that’s where his focus is.  
  
“We gave them a chance. That’s the thing, you see, James.” James had been part of his cover. “We don’t hurt innocent people. And we always give people a chance. But they wouldn’t stop. We bled them dry of money, but in retaliation they went to several pounds, adopted every animal they could, and  _slaughtered_  them.” The woman sounds heartbroken at that, almost as if she might cry. Intense emotion is to be expected among ecoterrorists, but he’s never been very good at handling crying women.  
  
The woman doesn’t say anything more for a few moments, but when she does, her voice is firm and strong. “They even took pictures to show us when we showed up again. We weren’t the villains of this story—they were.”  
  
She’s caressing his cheek, and it’s so incredibly unnerving. It doesn’t seem like she’s trying to mess with him again. It’s almost as if she’s reaching for some kind of comfort in human touch.  
  
A part of him—a part of him that he’ll never admit to—is oddly attracted to her under the circumstances. Her voice is soft and seductive, and her touch is electric, and it’s all very wrong.  
  
“Do you always put your recruits under such intense acrobatics before you reveal yourselves to them?” he asks now, because he’s honestly wondering, and it’s a good distraction from the way she’s touching him.  
  
She pats his cheek, and leans in to whisper by his ear. “Just the spies.”  
  
She pulls away at that, and he realizes he’s been made.  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
  
“You’re better than that.” She seems to have picked up the knife again, because it’s pressed against his neck now.  
  
He might be able to get away from her, he thinks, already planning his escape, but then she pulls back.  
  
“We’ve already emptied the warehouse of everything necessary. I’m afraid we’ll have to leave some things behind, but they’re easily replaceable. We’d already wiped pretty much everything down before you even got here.” She sounds oddly proud of herself now, but only because she has him by the throat, and not because she’s being unreasonably cocky. She’s already won.  
  
“How did you—“  
  
“Figure it out?” the woman asks, and he nods.  
  
“In the past few months, sixteen agents have tried to infiltrate our organization. You started at exactly the same time that they did, and you, sweetling, try far too hard.”  
  
“Are you ready to go?” Grant hears the woman’s partner call out.  
  
“Almost,” she calls back. “Just leave me here a second with this one. I’ll be right out.”  
  
Grant listens as the footsteps get quieter and quieter.  
  
“Are you going to kill me?” he asks.  
  
“What’s your real name?” she asks him, ignoring his question.  
  
He says nothing.  
  
“I’ll find it out,” she says softly. “Don’t worry.”  
  
“Are you going to kill me?” he asks again.  
  
“Are you going to kill  _me?”_ she asks him instead.  
  
“What?”  
  
The woman slides the knife through his bindings and he’s free, reaching for his blindfold when she places a finger over his lips.  
  
“I’m not foolish enough to think that I could beat you in a physical fight,” she says softly, way too close to him for his comfort.  
  
Grant can’t explain what stops him from taking her down. Something about her makes him hesitate.  
  
“Would you like to kiss me?” she asks suddenly.  
  
“What?” he asks again, his mind stuck in some kind of funk.  
  
“All you’d have to do is lean your head in a tad. It wouldn’t be very difficult at all.”  
  
Finally in range, he hears the voice of his partner Melinda in his ear. “We’re coming for you.” He knows she can hear what’s happening now, but he’s, he’s  _stuck_. He can’t bring himself to care yet.  
  
“Just kiss me,” she says softly. “Or don’t. I won’t make you. I’m just . . . curious.”  
  
He tells himself that it’ll buy him some time, because for all he knows, there are still guards in the room, and this is some elaborate test.  
  
She tastes sweet, like the watermelon they’d offered him during their little lunch break.  
  
His hands slide up her thighs to the small of her back.  
  
Some small part of him thinks he ought to wrap them around her neck, but he doesn’t.  
  
His body is flush up against hers, and every nerve-ending in his body feels like it’s warm and buzzing.  
  
He feels a slight pinprick, and she pushes herself away from him, nudging him back so that he’s leaning back against the couch. He tries to move, but discovers he can’t.  
  
“That right there is some minor paralysis. It won’t cause any permanent damage, or spread to your lungs or your heart, but it should keep you still for the next hour or so, not that we’ll need that much time.”  
  
She kisses his cheek. “Maybe I’ll see you again.”

~~

 **present**  
  
“Do you ever think it’s weird that they do small stuff and big stuff?”  
  
“What?” Grant doesn’t look up from staring down at his case files.  
  
“I mean,” Skye continues, “Most terrorists like to go bigger and bigger-they like to lead up to a grand finale, or they have something huge in mind. It’s like these two do whatever the hell they feel like.”  
  
“Maybe they do.”  
  
Skye sighs. “That makes it really hard to track them. Four years ago they had a web of people underneath them that could be found, but now they don’t. Now, everything is in the shadows. I mean—how do they recruit? Where do they  _live?”_  
  
“I don’t know, Skye.” Grant’s brain latches onto something she said. “How  _do_  they recruit?”  
  
“That’s what I just asked you. Clearly I don’t know the answer.”  
  
“Skye,  _think._ ”  
  
Skye just stares at him. “Are you having a breakdown? Coulson said that if you ever have a breakdown I’m supposed to buy you cake and let you talk about your feelings, but I’m pretty sure that was just a joke.”  
  
Grant shakes his head, turning to face her. “Last time, they knew I was after them because of all the people who came to them—maybe that’s the key. Maybe they go to the people they want.”  
  
“I can’t imagine there aren’t baby ecoterrorists out there, looking to make a name for themselves, who don’t want to join up though, Grant,” Skye says, biting down on the end of her pen and then frowning at it.  
  
“They’ve been doing this for seven years; it’s like an elite club. Anyone who is a big enough deal isn’t interested in joining up with other people. And anyone who isn’t probably doesn’t have the connections to  _find_ them.”  
  
“This is a huge jump in logic, Grant, but—“ Skye’s eyes widen. “You might have a point.”  
  
“So maybe we should try infiltrating the organization again. Find someone, make them an attractive recruit—“ Grant shakes his head. “That’s not going to work.”  
  
“No,” Skye agrees. “It won’t. But I’ve got an even better idea.”  
  
~~  
  
“Put the ear piece in,” Grant tells her, but Skye’s too busy bouncing nervously. “Calm down, Matthews.”  
  
Skye wrings her hands. “What if they don’t believe me?”  
  
“You’ll have to sell it.”  
  
“This was a stupid idea.”  
  
“This was  _your_  idea,” Grant points out.  
  
Skye paces around the hotel room.  
  
“I’m just supposed to follow their lead. I’m supposed to just go wherever they want me to—what if they want to kill me?”  
  
“Then you’d probably already be dead.”  
  
Skye nods her head, “Of course, of course. I can’t believe they actually think I’d switch sides.”  
  
“They probably don’t.”  
  
“What if Coulson finds out, and  _fires_  us for not following proper protocol?”  
  
Grant shakes his head. “If we tell Coulson, then half the agency knows because of protocol. The Wonder Twins could have a mole in the department or have someone bugged, or the excess of people following you could tell them what we’re up to anyway. It’s just you and me.”  
  
Skye stops pacing, and breathes in deeply. “Once I push the button and put it in my ear, we’re on radio silence, right?”  
  
  
Grant nods.  
  
“Okay,” Skye surprises him by launching herself at him, hugging him tightly. “Thank you for teaching me so much. Just in case I die, I want to tell you how much that’s meant to me. You’ve been like a big brother to me, and I’ve never really had family—“  
  
Grant just pats her back. “It’s okay, Skye. You’ll come back, and be just fine. Just stay calm.”  
  
Skye pulls away from him. “I am calm, I am  _calm_. I will be fine. You’ve got my back, right?” She’s not even really talking to him anymore, because she’s trying to convince herself of it.  
  
“Yes,” he assures her. “I’ve got your back.”  
  
~~  
  
 **two years ago**  
  
“Don’t you think it’s kind of weird that you’re stalking him?” Leo asks Jemma as she stares at the video feed she has on Grant’s hotel room. She’d seen him earlier in the day, and she’d followed him back to his room. It hadn’t taken much effort at all to get into the hotel’s computers and find out his name, and then hook up a video feed when he’d left again.  
  
“I’m not watching him undress or anything, Fitz. I’m just—he’s in the same  _hotel_  as us. I saw him in the lobby this morning. What if he’s after us?” Clearly, she doesn’t have ulterior motives. She’s just being careful.  
  
“First of all, he doesn’t know what we look like, Jem. And second, he’s after the art thief who stole the Monet last week,” Leo flips through a copy of some Italian magazine. “I wish I spoke Italian.”  
  
“Then learn it,” Jemma says simply. “You always want to learn languages, but then two weeks later we’re somewhere else, so it’s a waste of time.”  
  
“That’s why I never learn any new languages—because I have you here to be the voice of reason. How much longer do we have to stay cooped up in this hotel room anyway?” He’s never minded the cooped up bit, but he doesn’t care for living from hotel room to hotel room.  
  
Jemma shrugs, her already messy bun completely collapsing and letting her hair tumble down on her shoulders. “I don’t know yet, Fitz. Maybe we’ll have to cancel tomorrow’s lecture.”  
  
“Good idea, Jemma. I was getting nervous hives anyway. You know I hate public speaking.”  
  
“It’s just a lecture on creating eco-friendly new technology—it’s the entire point of what we’ve been doing, Fitz. Nothing we do matters if we can’t inspire young minds to feel responsible for the fate of the world.” Jemma frowns. “We can’t cancel.”  
  
“You just said we might have to—“ Leo points out, but Jemma glares at him.  
  
“I hadn’t quite decided, but now I have. It’s far too important to continue with the lecture series.”  
  
“What if that’s what gets us caught in the end? Public speaking. It’s the devil, I say.” Leo sighs.  
  
“It won’t, Leo. There’s no connection between you and me, and certainly not a connection between your university visits and anything but a healthy interest in saving the planet.”  
  
Leo shrugs. “I’m just tired.”  
  
“I know,” Jemma is tired too, and they’re far from done. “Don’t worry about this agent—I’ll handle him.”  
  
~~  
  
 **present**  
  
Skye ends up in Brooklyn, and Grant almost regrets not telling Coulson, because managing to follow her to the little pizza place she eventually gets to is a lot more difficult by himself than he’d imagined.  
  
He sneaks in a few minutes after her, perching himself in a corner, and pulling his hat a little more over his face, and picking up a menu.  
  
Skye is sitting barely within his eyesight, but she looks like she’s concentrating on whatever she’s being told.  
  
She stands up, and walks over to the women’s restroom, disappearing inside, and Grant nearly groans. Fantastic. He told her to go before they started this.  
  
Five minutes later, he’s ready to groan for a different reason, because she’s still in there, which means something has probably gone wrong.  
  
He looks around the restaurant, making sure no one is looking at him, but they couldn’t be less interested when he opens the door and ducks inside.  
  
Thankfully, there’s no one in there to report him to the police.  
  
On the other hand, there’s no one in there, which is a problem.  
  
He notes that the window is open, and sighs. He narrows his eyes, and steps a bit closer to the window to see that the earpiece Skye had been wearing is now sitting right there.  
  
Shit. He picks it up and has to stop himself from smashing it, or from punching the wall, which is what he’d really like to do.  
  
When his phone rings, he answers it almost immediately, on autopilot. “Ward.”  
  
“Don’t you worry, Grant. Skye’s just fine. It turns out that she decided to take us up on our offer after all. Try not to be too angry at her. She didn’t know what she’d intended when she said goodbye to you earlier,” she says tartly. “But I’m afraid this isn’t a drill. She’s defected.”  
  
“I don’t believe that.” There’s a part of him that knows that if Skye hadn’t intended to join them for real instead of for the job, she’d have led him to them, and he wouldn’t be standing here having this conversation. A full-fledged infiltration won’t do them any good at this point. His heart is sinking, and he’s beginning to feel sick, because he knows what this means.  
  
“Oh yes you do,” the soft British voice says, almost sympathetically. “Don’t beat yourself up about it. We would have gotten her with or without your support. Some things are more important than the law.”  
  
“Nothing is more important than the law—“ he says, but she  _tut tuts_  into the phone.  
  
“You don’t believe that, Grant. Protecting people is more important, don’t you think? Protecting the  _planet_. Laws are supposed to keep people safe, but you operate outside of plenty of them yourself, don’t you?”  
  
The worst part is that she’s right, and he hates her for it. “Let me talk to Skye.”  
  
“I think it’s a tad early for that. We have quite a lot to talk about. Tomorrow, I think.”  
  
With that, she hangs up, and this time he does punch the wall, hissing in pain as he cracks the cheap-looking ceramic, which is apparently a lot less cheap than it looks.  
  
His hand is bleeding, he notes dispassionately.  
  
~~  
  
He doesn’t tell Coulson about this development either.  
  
It’s entirely possible(unlikely though it is) that this is part of her plan, that she’d decided that telling them part of the truth would make them believe that she was actually defecting(there’s no point to this, the rational part of him argues, unless she has a more complex plan than the one they’d worked out).  
  
On the other hand, she might have fallen for their tricks. They’d been her ear for close to two hours before they reached the pizza place, so who knows what they’d said to her?  
  
He knows as well as anyone how seductive they can be.  
  
~~  
  
 **two years ago**  
  
After a particularly annoying case, Grant is ready for a shower. It’s early, early morning, so the sun hasn’t quite risen yet, so it’s still dark. He’s tempted to see if he and his partner can steal a few hours the next day before they fly back to the states—if not to see the city, then at least to sleep.  
  
But as soon as he enters his hotel room, shutting the door to the hallway behind himself, he knows something is wrong, and he pulls out his gun.  
  
The lights are off, so all he sees is a shadowy figure on the bed.  
“I’m just curious—“ and he relaxes into the tension. She’s a known entity, even if she’s a dangerous one. “You completed your mission, yes?”  
  
“Apparently I have a new one,” Grant replies, not moving from where he is, even when she seems to scoot up closer to the end of the bed.  
  
“Oh, don’t worry about us, dear. We don’t have anything criminal planned for Italy. At least not now. We’re just taking in the sights.”  
  
“Somehow, I don’t buy that.”  
  
“Believe what you will.”  
  
“Why are you here?” he demands.  
  
She starts at that, as if he’s caught her off-guard, or maybe she’s just not sure which lie to tell him yet, he thinks. “I saw you, earlier. I followed you here out of curiosity. I just thought I’d stop by,” she says casually.  
  
Grant shakes his head, though he’s not sure she can even see him well enough to tell. “I have to take you in.”  
  
“Well, you can try.” She laughs at that, and her laugh is far too warm for a woman like her. Although her words are slightly mocking, her tone is not. Her laugh is not cruel.  
  
“I’m the one with a gun pointed at you.”  
  
The woman sits up on the bed. “True, but I have all the important weapons here.”  
  
He steps cautiously toward the bed. “I know I have a gun, but I can’t see that you have one, so I’m pretty sure you don’t have any leverage here.”  
  
He’s at the end of the bed, the gun pointed right at her, but she doesn’t make a move to disarm him, or roll of the bed to try to throw him off.  
  
She simply sighs. “Do you know, I’ve never seen a man enjoy one of my sandwiches as much as my partner does? You were the first person who actually, even though he was blindfolded and tied up at the time, took the time to taste it. A fine appreciation of food is so difficult to find nowadays. That’s why we enjoy it here so much. Such love of simple foods, elevated with such stunning flavors.”  
  
At this point, he lowers his gun, unsure of himself.  
  
“Sit with me.” He can’t explain the pull she has on him—probably not any more than she can explain, truly, why she’s there—but he sits.  
  
“I don’t like guns myself,” she says conversationally. “I don’t care to kill.”  
  
“But you do.”  
  
“Much like you do, I suppose. Only when absolutely necessary. You are not so different from us, Grant.”  
  
“How’d you learn my name?”  
  
“The same way I learned your room number, silly.” She reaches out and places a hand on his arm.  
  
He aches, but he can’t explain it, and doesn’t want to understand why.  
  
His stomach feels like it’s clenched, like there’s so much tension there he’s about to snap.  
  
That he can explain, and he understands it well.  
  
“Have you ever had sex with one of the people you’ve hunted?” she asks suddenly, moving her hand up his arm to his shoulder, and then his face.  
  
Despite himself, he leans into it. “No.”  
  
“Pity. I’m sure there are all sorts of rules against it.” There’s a humming in his blood at her words, drowning out his ability to think. He should do so many things right now, and none of them are coming to mind.  
  
“I suppose there’s a first time for everything,” he hears himself say, and he’s lost.  
  
Her teeth scrape against his throat, and she leaves scratches on his back, and he’s sure he leaves bruises on her skin too, though it’s hard to remember, later.  
  
It’s a blur of hot, molten lava flowing between them, fireworks in his head, and the taste of every inch of her on his tongue.  
  
That, he doesn’t forget. In fact, that he remembers, from before. But now he sears every single sensation into his mind, and avoids any thought of what should come after.  
  
Later, much later, when he awakens, he’ll realize what a fool he’s been, because she’s long gone, and he’ll never catch her now.  
  
She leaves nothing for him now, except disgust with himself, and maybe even a little self-hatred.  
  
He tells no one.  
  
~~  
  
 **present**  
  
He orders room service back at the hotel, staring down in anger at his hand, which has stopped bleeding, but still fucking hurts.  
  
Maybe he ought to pound his head against a wall next, he thinks. It might dull the pain.  
  
He didn’t break or sprain it, but he already can see a pretty nice bruise forming.  
  
As he eats his chicken salad, he contemplates his next move.  
  
He doesn’t have a lot of choices, as far as he’s concerned.  
  
He’ll just have to—what, he never quite decides, because he passes out, his eyes rolling back into his head, and his eyelids fluttering closed.  
  
~~  
  
He wakes up to the smell of lemon.  
  
“Oh, look, he’s awake.” Skye, he realizes.  
  
He’s blindfolded, he notes groggily.  
  
“I told you he’d wake up soon enough.” The woman whose voice haunts his dreams, he realizes.  
  
They give him some time to reorient himself, because it’s very disorienting to wake up blindfolded, and dizzy from some kind of drug. He’s never been fond of it, and it happens far too frequently in his line of work.  
  
“Did you book the plane tickets?” Grant hears from the Scottish man from before. He recognizes the voice easily, even if it weren’t the most obvious process of elimination he’s ever come up against.  
  
“Of course I did. Don’t worry,” Skye tells him, and Grant realizes she sounds like she really knows him, like she’s clicked with him, like they’ve filled up the space that Grant’s known was empty inside of her the moment he met her. He should have known it would end up like this.  
  
“What’s going on?” Grant asks finally, when he feels like he’s back in control, even though he’s clearly tied to a chair.  
  
“We’ve decided to change things up,” the British woman tells him. “Skye here, and our previous computer expert, have set up a nice little life for us, far far away. We’ll continue to dedicate ourselves to bettering the world in all ways possible, of course. But it seemed like to make a home for ourselves, and scale back some of the flashier work we’ve done.”  
  
“We are scientists, after all,” Grant hears the Scottish man say.  
  
“They’re actually really brilliant,” Skye tells him. “I’m so impressed.”  
  
“We’re very impressed with you too,” he hears the woman say. “It’s lovely to have you aboard.” They’re practically fawning over each other, and it’s disgusting.  
  
“How come I always end up blindfolded with you two, but she gets compliments?” he asks conversationally. He’d rather do it confrontationally, but that won’t get him anywhere, and he knows it.  
  
“Oh, this is the last time that’ll happen,” the woman who haunts his dreams tells him, brushing the back of her hand up against his cheek. “We’re going to work behind the scenes a bit more, now. We have plans. And you, Grant, can be part of that, if you’d like.”  
  
“The answer to your question by the way is that we trust her, but we don’t trust you yet,” the Scottish man says.  
  
“You don’t even know her.”  
  
“Of course we do,” the British woman murmurs in his ear. “And we know you too.”  
  
“You don’t know anything about me,” he hears himself say.  
  
Someone sighs, and he hears movement out of the room.  
  
“The first time I met you, I knew you were special. I felt it in my fingertips, in my chest, in my  _bones_.” The British woman sighs.  
  
“You’re a sociopath.”  
  
“That’s quite rude,” she replies, without anger. “I thought you felt it too, which is why when I went to your hotel room two years ago, I—I lost myself, a little. Just for a little while. I didn’t have to worry about the plan, about making things right. About what we did.”  
  
“What did you do?”  
  
Grant feels hands on his cheeks, and seconds later the blindfold is off, and he’s looking at a woman who looks more like a librarian than a terrorist.  
  
For the first time, he gets a good look at her.  
  
He loses himself, a little, in her eyes, and immediately hates himself for it.  
  
“Not quite what you were expecting?” the woman asks. She’s so sweet-looking, he doesn’t know what to say. She’s even blushing slightly, like she’s nervous about him seeing her for the first time.  
  
He doesn’t have the chance to respond before she sits down in the chair he’d noticed across from him, where someone had probably been sitting and watching him before he woke up.  
  
“When my partner and I entered university, we were a bit younger than our fellow students, and so naturally we gravitated toward each other, and though our scientific aspirations were different, they were complementary. We learned and worked together well.”  
  
“Does he know you slept with me?”  
  
She makes a face at that, scrunching her nose and frowning. “Sort of. It isn’t as if he’d care overly much, because we aren’t involved. Him and I, I mean. Not the two of  _us_ , not that there is or isn’t anything between us, I’m simply—“ she trails off, meeting his eyes.  
  
Grant fights a smile, but the corners of his mouth  
  
“What?” She looks around. “Am I missing something?”  
  
“You ramble,” he says. “I’d never noticed that before.”  
  
“I’m very good when I’m in character. But once I drop out, I’m just me. An awful liar, and a rambler.” She isn’t defensive about it. She simply states it as fact, though her cheeks blush pink, ever so slightly.  
  
“So, your story.” He supposes he may as well listen to it while he attempts to form a plan.  
  
“Oh, yes. Of course.” She pushes hair away from her face where it’s fallen in front of her face. He gets distracted by watching her, he realizes. “We were young and impressionable.”  
  
“So, someone came along, taught you how to be good little ecoterrorists, and sent you on your way?”  
  
“Not at all,” she says, surprising him. “The opposite. We were involved in several research projects, which were funded in part by unscrupulous corporations. There were a few things, in particular, which had some disastrous consequences, and—“ she takes a deep breath, as if to steady herself.  
  
He watches her hands clench in her lap. “And you hold yourselves responsible.”  
  
“As we should,” she nods. “We can’t simply wash our hands of the things we’ve done.”  
  
“Don’t you think you’ve done enough?” he suggests lightly.  
  
“Not nearly,” she says softly, looking down at her hands, which are clutching the bottom of the sweater she’s wearing so tightly she’s probably stretching the fabric out, at least a little. “People died.”  
  
“People die all of the time.”  
  
“Innocent people, Grant,” she looks back up at him sharply. “It weighs differently on your soul. And it may not have been our fault directly, but no one wanted to take responsibility, no one wanted to accept that all of us who had been involved led to those deaths. We’ve done what we could about that though—we’re moving on to the next stage. We can’t be vengeful forever.”  
  
He watches her carefully. “It doesn’t get any easier, does it?”  
  
“No,” she admits with a slight, humorless smile. “It doesn’t.”  
  
“When I was a kid,” he starts, and then hesitates, surprise crossing his face. He’d been about to open up about something that he doesn’t tell  _anyone_.  
  
She scoots her chair over, and reaches out, placing a hand on his. “You understand,” she says softly, seeing right through him.  
  
“I do.”  
  
“You know what it’s like to carry that kind of guilt. And no matter what people say, about who is truly at fault, the weight of the world is on your shoulders.”  
  
“Yes,” he admits softly, looking down at her hand over his.  
  
“We have rules. But I—I’ve broken them for you, because I saw something in you. I feel it now too. You understand. You have what we look for—you have heart.”  
  
“I can’t,” he says. “I’m not cut out for this.” He isn't, he tells herself. But when he looks at her, he thinks maybe--maybe, he might be.  
  
She squeezes his hand, and he looks up to meet her eyes again, seeing only kindness.  
  
“Ask me,” she says softly. “Ask me anything you want to know. And if I answer, and my answer satisfies you, join us. You find people, Grant. You’re a glorified bounty hunter, and while many of those people are terrible, imagine how much more you could do with us.”  
  
He hesitates. “What’s your name? Your real one?”  
  
She smiles at that, clearly surprised, but pleased by his question. “Jemma.”  
  
“Okay,” he says, and she lights up at that, pulling out a knife, and cutting his bindings. She’s far too optimistic, he thinks. Too romantic and foolish to trust that that would be enough. (She’s smarter than that, he thinks.)  
  
It’s easy, much too easy, to pull the knife from her grasp, and cover her mouth with his hand, pressing the knife to her throat. He removes the hand from her mouth, because the knife is threat enough, he thinks.  
  
Her eyes are unreadable now. Her open face and heart are closed off to him now, but she doesn’t look disappointed, or surprised, or much of anything.  
  
She looks like she’s waiting.  
  
He remembers what she tastes like, even now, what it feels like to touch her, what it feels like to be teased by her.  
  
He knows her, somehow, though he shouldn’t. There’s no reason for this feeling he has, clenching his heart in his chest.  
  
He closes his eyes, and breathes in deeply.  
  
He has to decide what to do next.  
  
He imagines his life—a nice sized office, with a nice boss, a lonely apartment, a life empty of girlfriends or regular lovers.  
  
He opens his eyes, and sees her—Jemma, he thinks, it suits her--delicate and yet stunningly brilliant and strong, and determined to change the world.  
  
He pulls away, setting the knife on the seat he’d vacated.  
  
He looks around the room before his eyes eventually meet hers. She smiles at him—a full, wide and bright smile. The kind they write poetry about, the kind that fools wax on about.  
  
He sees his future.  
  
~~  
  
Later, when they reach their new home, he’s not surprised to see Melinda May there. “She’d been working with us since before you managed to infiltrate our organization,” Jemma tells him.  
  
“So you got her to delay the rescue team while you, what, tried to make me yours?”  
  
Jemma laughs, reaching her arms around his neck, and hugging him. “You’ve been mine since the night in that warehouse, Grant. And I’ve been yours. I’ve just been waiting for you to catch up.”  
  
~~  
  
 **the future**  
  
And they all live happily ever after.


End file.
